It Was Late And I Was Tired

2 Being the part that comes after the first

2 Being the part that comes after the first, hopefully shedding more light upon why part the first was chosen to be the start of something rather than some later date. It is hoped then that later parts will explain why this needed to be the second part.

So you might wonder, what was the point of any of that? It's a question we all ask ourselves, and even the philosophers don't know the answer. That's the great part about books and stories, they have all the answers, we think they have all the answers, if you can just find them. The written word has presentation, it has veracity. It's why we believe what we read, especially the part about not believing what you read. We contradict ourselves, we contain multitudes. Maybe you caught that one, good. Maybe you noticed the hallways all leading down into the basement. Kind of the basement of our brain where all the good stuff and the worst stuff and the better stuff lives. There's another set of shelves there, it's where the next volume of the story is. Maybe this one will justify its existence, but probably not.

Tufbashe Academy is located in its own private city in its own private buffer zone on its own private island so one could understand that for them, privacy was something of a priority. Privacy was also something of a priority for Victoria Barafort, who enjoyed the privacy of the back of her very own limo on drives such as this, so perhaps it was not a surprise that neither the driver nor Ashiyubi had reason to wonder how she was doing in the back until they arrived at the Academy.

It was a surprisingly normal looking set of buildings, large but homey, with brick and ivy and lots of little windows for all the good little boys and girls to watch the world go by out of. It had world class facilities, like pools and a sports arena and even its own newspaper building and broadcast tower. It also had quite a lot for traffic despite being the start of the second semester rather than the beginning of the school year, and it was a good forty minutes longer than the estimated three hour drive time before the limo was pulling up in front of the school and if anything should have indicated there was something wrong with Victoria this may have been it. This was the first time she'd gone more than twenty minutes without complaining about something, shouting for a cool drink, insisting that she knew a better route than the driver or bragging about how she and her father owned one or another building (and on Tufbashe Academy island, much like most places, this was quite a few of them) and that the peasantry really didn't understand how difficult it was to be as beautiful and intelligent as she was.

There was a special pick up and drop off section in front exclusively for vips, of course, and the limo stopped in front of it with a kind of relief the driver shared. Waiting for her to say something the entire time and it never happening was almost worse than the constant verbal abuse. He just wanted a hug, maybe a friend. Maybe he could get a job working the Zamboni at the ice rink. Anything was better than this.

Ashiyubi pulled the door of the limo opened and waited. She waited a bit more and then looked inside. There were the two rows of seats, one facing backward and one facing forward typical of the limo. Victoria was slumped in her reclined armchair like seat, her bare feet resting on the far seats, and her arms dangling limply at her sides. Her suitcase was in her lap, there was a large comical lump on the top of her head and her eyes were glazed. One of her eyes stared up and the other down, and a concussed grin was on her face; a trickle of drool ran down her chin. Victoria stared confusedly at triple slowly rotating versions of the inside of the car, still rather dazed.

Ashiyubi didn't miss a beat. "Mistress, are you quite all right?" She said, gently shaking her on the shoulder. "Do you want me to paint your toenails?" she asked.

"Whu..wha..?" said Victoria, staring at the double versions of Ashiyubi gently rotating in front of her.

"I simply want to know if you wished me to pain your toenails, mistress," Ashiyubie repeated. Victoria stared dazedly at the spiraling people for a minute or two until they finally coalesced into her maid.

"Oh, it's you," said Victoria like a scuba diver halfway through spelunking an underwater cave noticing their hose had been cut.

"Are you feeling better? Do you wish me to give you a foot massage?" said Ashiyubi, again, still in her usual monotone. Victoria stared dumbly at her for a moment and then frowned.

"No, stop asking me that. Where are we? What happened?" she asked in mild confusion.

"We are at Tufbashe Academy, presumably you were knocked senseless when your suitcase escaped its compartment and struck you on the head. This probably happened when we had to make an abrupt stop earlier. You then no doubt spent a good deal of the trip passed out until I found you in a semiconscious daze drooling on yourself moments earlier," she finished without changing her tone.

Victoria frowned at her with confusion and then distaste, "What, no, I wasn't unconscious, I was.."

"Semiconscious and drooling on yourself," Ashiyubi corrected.

"I wasn't semiconscious and drooling on myself, I was... looking through my luggage. Maybe peasants like you don't double check your luggage, but I for one find it very important," she said, trying to look haughty and wipe the drool off her chin without it being obvious. Victoria's face went dark and she glared out the window.

"I just remembered... there was that stupid woman on a bicycle," she said. That plain brown haired girl in the martial arts uniform. What a stupid peasant, didn't she have any idea of the rules of the road? It was a good thing they wouldn't allow anyone so uncouth into a school this prestigious. That was what she thought anyway, so it was quite a shock when beyond the lines of cars parked in the nearby lot, and past the buses arriving from various parts of the island she spotted a familiar bicycle. The girl, bandana and all was pedaling like a maniac right up to the front of the school and a line of bike racks. She leapt off, did a flip in the air and landed on her feet, then pulled a bike chain from a bag on the bicycle and began to secure the vehicle.

"It's that miserable peasa-" Victoria began to shout, but so extreme was her anger surprise at that moment she forgot she was inside her limo. She jumped to her feet so quickly her head slammed into the interior roof of the car with an audible THWACK! Stars flashed before her eyes and she collapsed back into her seat like a marionette with the strings cut. The ring of chirping birds greeted her again as her eyes began to spin in opposite directions. Her jaw dropped and her tongue began to lol. Victoria wasn't so angry anymore, there were just too many pretty birdies.

Ashiyubi looked on without apparent surprise as her mistress brained herself on the interior of her limo and collapsed into a heap. "Mistress, are you all right? Do you wish me to paint your toenails?" she inquired in the same monotone as always.